Test drive BMW 7 E65 E66 2001 - 2005 sedan

Seventh coming

The new generation of the BMW 7 excited the imagination of experts and simply admirers of the brand long before the first running prototypes of the model appeared. The main dispute, of course, flared up around the appearance of the new flagship of the Bavarian company: through the efforts of the new BMW designer Chris Banlla, the model turned out to be very unusual. Unusual in general, but for BMW in particular. Yes, all branded features are present without fail - the famous nostrils, the pains familiar to the pain on the back door, invariable four headlights. But in all the rest, the new seven simply does not look like herself. For the first time, the Bavarians deliberately went directly to the S-class competition, initially positioning the model much higher than the famous elephants. And for the first time, oh God, the seven is more expensive than Mercedes S-class. Let it not be much, but the very fact of such a confrontation suggests that the company is internally ripened for a rigid struggle on the competitor's field. Indeed, the comfort and smoothness of the move were earlier, and the glory of stylish sports orientation cars firmly entrenched in BMW. Now, the blow is struck exactly at the enemy’s camp - BMW deliberately advertises the model precisely as a limousine with an unsurpassed level of comfort. In general, the battle is brewing serious, and it seems that none of the opponents is going to be content with the second place.
 
How is the new BMW 7 capable of overshadowing the famous Mercedes S? More accurately this question can only be answered after a comparative test, if one is really really organized with us, but even purely theoretically, the new bimmer has a chance to break into the leaders.
 
Let's start with appearance. After the monumental 140th, the current S-class to many admirers of the merins initially seemed to be some kind of small, not solid and thorough enough. And it is quite natural that the Bavarians, taking advantage of the moment, decided to beat the flagship of competitors around the sick place - the new seven nearby looks incredibly massive and enormous, especially if it is painted in a bright kner. This is not visible in the photo, but if you stand nearby, then the advantage of the novelty in terms of size is obvious. We proceed to the filling and ... In this place, the Schwabs should just drop our hands: in the shortest possible time and in the mode of complete secrecy, the competitors managed to create such a high -tech car that the operating guide, if any, should resemble the Bible in thickness.
 
Let's just say - today the BMW seven is the most high -tech and sophisticated serial car in the world! Yes, that’s right, no more. Most of the constructive delights of this seven, previously shining on concepts, first found use on the serial model. Take at least a unique system of centralized management of service devices, called I-Drive. It may seem from the side that the merit is not so great, but when the fact is announced that more than 700 (!) Devices that can be changed on board the new seven, thus achieving more suitable performance characteristics, it becomes clear that unique I -Drive is really a step forward and a new word in the ergonomics of the driver's workplace. Although the idea is simple to the impossibility: almost all the control functions were laid on the Joystick-Cheak, located on the central console, and it works on the principle of a computer mouse. By swaying the joystick, you can select a menu, determine the device whose operating mode you want to change, and activate it with easy pressing or off it. Everything happens very quickly, although in order to deal with this farm, you need quite a lot of time. But then - just incredible pleasure from the fact that the car can be fully configured in accordance with your tastes and requirements, and thanks to the use of I -Drive, it was possible to achieve a significant increase in the number of types of settings and operating modes.
 
A specific example is heated chairs. In a regular car, this process is limited to the provision of VCL/ Off, a temperature regime is a little less common. In the BMW 7, you can choose not only the temperature, but also the area of \u200b\u200bthe body that the chair will heat up, to set an individual temperature for each zone, etc. In general, if you express everything in a nutshell - each option, if it is available on other cars, is simply erected to the cube here, therefore, depending on the settings of certain devices, the character of the car can vary in radically. So far, we only talked about heating the seats, but in the same way you can change the settings of almost everything, from climate control to the degree of rigidity of the shock absorbers.
 
About the fact that the new, the world's first serial 6 -speed automatic transmission has many operating modes and, depending on the need, can work in a sports, comfortable or manual mode, you can not say otherwise from BMW, whose machines are rightfully considered only Of the most perfect in the world, it would be foolish to expect. If we talk about any new products that competitors simply do not, then one of these many bells and whistles can be considered a parking brake with electronic control. Now in the BMW salon there is neither a traditional handbrake, nor a scabblers popular behind the ocean - the entire parking brake control process is assigned to a single button. But it is amazing not even this, but the possibility of using a handbrake provided by the designers instead of the standard brake system in case of failure. It is enough just to press on the aforementioned button, and the car will stop smoothly (!), And to prevent blocking at this moment, ABS sensors are used. However, the same function can be used for peaceful purposes: using I-Drive, you can turn on the mode when the handbrake will automatically hold the car on the slopes and during the stop, disconnecting at the time you touch the gas pedal.
 
In general, as you understand, the new BMW 7 is a really new page in the history of the automotive industry, so it is very difficult to describe it in a small article. It was not for nothing that I mentioned the instruction manual: if you list all the bells and whistles of this car, then the newspaper will be approximately the same volume. Therefore, we will leave a detailed consideration of this unique for the period of a closer acquaintance, which, I hope, will be held soon. The first copies of the latest BMW 7 are already in Minsk, and in the very near future we plan to conduct a thorough and lively test. Read a detailed BMW 745i running test in the first numbers of AG 2002.
 

Source: Auto -Gazeta / N 42 (345) dated 19.12.01